Rhonda Bracey: At Random

LONG trip today. We left Santa Rosa, California around 9:30am this morning, heading up the 101. We turned in towards the coast at Cloverdale, heading for Mendocino, crossing the Mendocino County Line which was made famous in a song somewhere, sometime…

The drive to the coast was very narrow and winding, but also very beautiful. Lots of Californian Oaks with dripping mosses and lichens. The day was glorious. Mendocino was as pretty as ever, and as it was the first time Char had seen that part of the Californian coast, she was as taken with it as anyone who sees it for the first time.

We continued making our way up the coast (Highway 1 at this stage) until we rejoined Highway 101 at a tiny spot called Leggett, where we took the car through the drive-through tree. (photos to come…). Then we followed 101 to Eureka and beyond, until after some 9 hours of driving we arrived at Brookings, OR, where we grabbed a room for the night. In total I drove some 337 miles, and there’s another 333 to Portland tomorrow…
Some of the highlights of today’s trip:

• Magnificent redwoods
• Lush green forests
• Brilliant coastline
• Raging oceans
• Very winding roads
• Lots of rain in parts; beautiful sunshine at other times; cloudy for the rest; some fog in places
• Very cold wind!
• Expensive fuel ($3.79 average in northern California, but only $3.50 immediately over the border in Oregon)
• Smooth driving and handling in the Mazda6

Char and I walked down to where she was doing her training this morning. We grabbed a bite to eat at “Specialty’s” along the way, then she went on to the training group while I went and checked out the Wells Fargo Museum that Char had recommended, located – not surprisingly – in the Wells Fargo Bank. This museum is probably not something that most visitors to San Francisco know about. I found it interesting. And those coaches were really cool. You could actually sit in one upstairs. Surprisingly, they held 9 people INSIDE and another 9 on the top fully loaded (3 on the driver’s bench and 6 up on the very top).

I then went back to the hotel to upload some photos, do final email checks, and check out. Because the valet parking would’ve gone in to another 24 hour period (and at $43 a day I didn’t want that!), I asked them to get the car and I loaded it up (on the hotel staff’s advice), then put it in the parking garage up the street.

Off I went. I visited the Museum of Crafts and Folk Art (they had a textiles exhibition on), but for $5 it was a bit light on… Then I went to the SFMOMA (San Francisco Museum of Modern Art) where I saw Klees, Mondrians, Dalis, Lichensteins, Warhols, Matisses, etc. So it was a bit of an arty farty day, not the normal stuff most people go to see in San Francisco.

But I had a problem. I realised that the hotel staff had really given me bad advice by telling me to put the luggage in the car and not leave it there in storage for collection late in the day. Silly me. I got all paranoid and stressed out that the luggage was at severe risk (memories of my sister and her husband having all their luggage stolen from the trunk of their car and having to deal with embassies etc. to get replacement passports).

So after leaving SFMOMA and having a quick bite to eat at a Californian Pizza Kitchen (HUGE appetizer!), I skedaddled back to the parking garage, checked that the luggage was all there (relief!), then drove on out of there.

But what to do for about 3 more hours, until Char finished her training course?

I ended up driving down to the Fisherman’s Wharf area and on to North Point as I remembered it being a nice place to just sit and relax, and vaguely remembered that there was open parking there. Yes! I found a 4 hour parking spot in view of where I sat. I read my book, glanced every so often at the car, and just chilled out looking over the bay watching the ships come in and go out. The day was nice and sunny, but the wind was pretty cold. Some very brave people were swimming….

Char called just before 5, so I headed back to the financial district in downtown San Francisco, picked her up and we hit the road north. The traffic was surprisingly good considering it was peak hour, and we were over the Golden Gate Bridge within 30 minutes.

We headed north as far as Santa Rosa, checked in to the local Holiday Inn Express, and had a nice meal at Applebees. Boy, have they got the marketing down right!! They do these ‘dessert shooters’ for $1.99 – they are just mini versions of desserts in a smallish glass cup. By being small and cheap, I’m sure they get MANY more people eating dessert than when they had those big slices of pie etc. I had the BEST Key Lime Pie ever – it was superbly tangy and with hardly any sweetness. Most Key Lime Pies I’ve had in the US have had a little tang and a LOT of sugar. Not this one. Highly recommmended.

The Holiday Inn Express had free wireless broadband, so at the moment Char and I are sitting on our respective beds working on our latops. Sad, really. And geeky. We even talked about playing Scrabulous online while we’re in the same room, as we don’t have a Scrabble board. What a couple of nerds!!

My new phrase of the day is “artificially heatened” (as in ‘artificially sweetened’), and it applies to all those houses and businesses in southern California that keep the heating turned on, even though the weather and temperature outside is magnificent.

No wonder the Americans are massive consumers of energy. Every private home I’ve stayed in so far has had the heating turned on, day in and day out. It’s springtime, people, and the daily temps are hovering around 75F. You don’t need the heating on. Open a window or door and ‘let the sunshine in’, and the breeze.

It’s springtime in the US, and that’s ‘skunk time’! I’ve seen a few dead in the road, but fortunately haven’t run over any.

If you’ve never smelt skunk, be aware that it’s highly pungent and almost impossible to get out if you get the smell on you – or under your car!

After doing some laundry, I left Monterey around 10am, stopping in Gilroy to change some of the underwear I bought a few days ago (I got the wrong model!). Then it was back on Highway 101 to Mountain View where I had a lovely lunch with Shelley, one of the Lone Writers group.

Travelling through Silicon Valley is such a thrill for a geek… The 101 goes right past these buildings: Intel, Sun, Yahoo, McAfee, WebEx, and more. Just think, back in 1995 when I drove that route often in a two week period, virtually none of those companies existed, or existed in the same way they do now.

I left Mountain View just on 2pm and was in the hotel in San Francisco just after 3pm. Finally, I have wireless broadband!! So I can catch up on blog posts, upload photos etc. Though I think I’ll be doing most of that tomorrow morning, as I’m waiting for my friend Char (from Boston) to return to the hotel room, then we’ll be out of here to go the the monthly dinner meeting of the Berkeley Chapter of STC.

(Anyone notice a theme with many of the blog post titles for this trip, yet???)

Update: Char and I just returned from the Berkeley Chapter meeting where we both met some lovely people. The dinner was good (home-cooked Thai green chicken curry), and the panel of speakers was good too. A nice feature was for each person to introduce themselves to the group prior to the main part of the meeting starting. That gave me a good sense of who did what, and where. The main meeting was a panel who focused on questions about what they looked for when hiring tech writers. While Linda U kept the panel on topic, some of the discussion roamed into related areas such as outsourcing, contractors, and the like. There were some good questions from the audience, and some interesting comments from the range of panelists. Two of the panelists worked for very large corporations in the Bay Area (Oracle and IBM), while the other two worked for (or had recently worked for) smaller organisations. However, in all cases, they each managed a team of at least five technical writers and associated professionals.

An absolutely gorgeous day today, so I’ve decided to take the scenic route via Highway 1 and the coast…. More later…

We’ve missed doing this drive the last few times as the fog or the rain have meant that it’s not worth it. I think once the road was impassable because of a rock slide.

It took me three hours to get from Paso to Monterey, as I stopped quite often on the trip to take photos! (I’ll upload them later…) It’s a VERY winding road for much of the length of the trip, but you get the most SPECTACULAR views of the ocean and the land sweeping in to it. Oh, and there are spots where Elephant Seals come to sun themselves.

I arrived at David’s mid-afternoon, then popped out with his ex, Lee, for a coffee and a natter (oh, and a detour to a fabulous fabric store…). Later David, Rita, and I went to Heather’s home to celebrate her husband’s birthday and have dinner. Heather is such a lovely person – I first met her when she was about 16 and she was lovely then too! More great food and wine and company…

Rita asked when and how David and I met, and we figured it had been 25 years ago since we met in Tahiti. Wow! 25 years!! So David called one of the Canadian guys who was on the same trip, and we all talked for ages. Greg was blown away to hear from David, and then from me! I haven’t seen Greg for at least 10 years, though I get to see David every year or two when we go to California. What a great blast from the past! Greg still keeps in contact with the other two guys, but told us that another who hung with our group died a couple of years back.

I saw the funniest thing when driving up Highway 101. I passed one of those pickup trucks with the big wheels and raised reasonably high off the ground. Hanging down from the back near the tow hitch was a sack, containing a set of balls! They looked like ram’s or bull’s balls.

Too funny! I laughed out loud, but didn’t have the opportunity to take a photo.

Update (7 April 2008): I’ve since found out that these things have a name—Truck Nutz—and there’s a website dedicated to them where you can buy your own. Go figure. I’m still wondering how my friend Dave had that URL right on the tip of his tongue when I mentioned them at one of our conference dinners…

Yesterday (Sunday, 9th March) I left the Newport Beach area and headed up the 405 to Highway 101 (a.k.a. Ventura Highway). It took about 90 mins to get to Camarillo where the first Factory Outlet mall outside LA is located. The traffic was light (it was the first day of Daylight Saving Time, and I left just after 8:15am), and the weather was fine and dry and sunny after the early morning fog burned off.

I made the Outlet mall in Camarillo just on opening time at 10:00am. Usual stuff – underwear! Some people think I’m mad, but the most comfortable underwear I have ever bought has been in the US, so whenever I come back I stock up on underwear. I can buy the same brands in Australia, but not the particular ‘model numbers’. So now I’m stocked up for another year or two or three!

I grabbed a grilled chicken burger at Wendy’s on the way out of Camarillo. The chicken was nice but the rest was crap. It was small, had those soft sugary hamburger buns so loved by the Americans, and was filled with soggy lettuce and sweet goopy mayo. I forgot to ask them to hold the mayo… The chips that came with it were dry and tasteless and had probably been sitting under the heated lights for too long. And the ‘medium’ Diet Coke was HUGE!

The rolling countryside was green – it’s still officially winter here (spring starts on March 22 or thereabouts). And the drive was fantastic, as always. Once I’m out of the LA area, driving in California is such a delight. Although the speed limit is officially 65mph for most of the time, the actual speed of the traffic varies between 70 and 80mph. But almost everyone is polite and considerate of other drivers – not like in Western Australia where ‘this is MY territory’ seems to be so important to some.

North of Santa Barbara there are many more acres covered in new vines than we saw when we were here only two years ago. And some of the smallish towns have grown a lot – particularly Atascadero, Templeton, and Paso Robles: the ones we know the best.

I landed in Paso (Robles) at John and Suzie’s right on 2pm. They’ve made great inroads on kitchen since we were last here. It’s nearly finished, bar the plumbing, the countertops, and the cupboard and drawer handles. It’s now huge – at least compared to what it was when they bought the place.

Around 3pm, Mark and Sue from Salinas turned up (I’d met Mark in Monterey a couple of years back, but hadn’t met his lovely wife Sue as she in LA at the Jay Leno show that night). We all went down to the local community hall for the Rotary Club’s annual Crab Fest, where we were joined at the table by Joey (female), Keith, and Jim.

Well, I’m not a big crab fan, and let’s just say that my opinion hasn’t changed! The company was good, as was the wine (BYO), but the food was very ordinary for $45 a head. Still, it was for a charitable cause, so I guess that made the price a little more palatable. Jim, Sue, and I went back to John and Suzie’s afterwards. Mark had eaten and run at the Crab Fest as he was flying out to China that night, on business, and had to get to LAX by 9pm.

Lots of laughs, more wine, port, and stickies, and dessert (Boston Cream Pie). Goodbyes were said around 11pm, and I hit the hay.

I thought I’d solved the phone issue two years ago. Not so. (See these posts from 2006: 1, 2)

Short story—the TracPhone I had could not be activated with the new Airtime card I purchased as the SIM is no longer valid. It seems that because the number associated with that SIM got allocated to someone else after expiry, the only solution was to get a new SIM card sent out by the TracPhone people (of course, being on the road and needing a phone now, mailing out a replacement SIM card wasn’t an option!!).

So back to the supermarket to buy ANOTHER phone. It activated very quickly, so now I have a phone. But it’s a pain in the proverbial, this whole phone business.

I believe that my new-ish Australian mobile phone will work in the US, but last I checked it costs about $5 PER CONNECTION (plus international timed call charges) to take or make a call on my Aussie mobile in the US. A US$59.99 phone is cheaper! Though I hate the idea of having to throw the old one away.

Bloody phones… Bloody disposable society.

The Hertz counter at LAX didn’t have a Mazda6 as I’d requested, so I ended up in a Chevrolet something-or-other. I wanted a Mazda6 as that will likely be the next car we get—we currently have two 10-year old Mazdas and are really happy with them, so this was to be an opportunity to take one for a long test drive.

However, on hearing me mention that I was going via San Francisco, the lady at the Hertz counter suggested I try exchanging the car there. Well, I could do one better than that—Orange County (John Wayne) airport which is about 6 miles from where I’m staying in Corona Del Mar! I called the Hertz counter at John Wayne when I arrived at Bill’s, but they didn’t have a Mazda6. The helpful lady suggested I call back the next day. So I called this morning (Saturday) and got one! So down to the airport to do the exchange.

Erin at the Hertz Gold counter was most helpful and polite, unlike the usual treatment you get at LAX. However, Erin did say that Hertz LAX did 2000 rentals just on Monday, so I guess they get a bit frazzled by people wanting something that isn’t available.